New Corporate Governance trends and best practices in Italy: where are we heading?

Fabio Bianconi, Director at Morrow Sodali, and Francesco Surace, Manager, contributed to an academic paper relating to Corporate Governance and published by FrancoAngeli on the special issue of the journal Corporate Governance and Research & Development Studies.

Morrow Sodali has developed key partnerships with Academia in Italy and abroad over the years (Bocconi University, La Sapienza , Sciences Po among others) to offer a more practical and professional approach aimed at promoting a broad knowledge of Corporate Governance issues and the expectations of the financial and business community.   

In this paper, Fabio Bianconi and Francesco Surace commented on the significant change in ownership structure witnessed at listed companies, including an increasing weight of institutional investors – with an average weight of 30.1% in 2019, up from 20.4% in 2013.

In recent years, a global push for “sustainability”, in particular ESG factors, has been increasingly driving institutional and corporate investors’ evaluation processes and decision-making. In parallel, listed companies are called upon to rethink their attitude towards business & performance as the issues related to environmental, social and governance policies (in short ESG factors) are inextricably linked to corporate risk, value creation and financial performance.